
The problem with MS-DOS format is that it was intended to store files less than 4GB. macOS fully supports FAT32 (appears as MS-DOS in the Disk Utility) and ExFAT.
Usb flash drive mac Pc#
Here is a file format compatibility table from my previous post: FormatĪs you can see from the table above, Macs support most PC formats, while PC only supports its own ones.
Usb flash drive mac windows#
In case there is a possibility, even a remote one, that the flash drive will be used with Windows computers, then pick ExFAT. However, do not use case-sensitive variants: I don’t know a single case when it could be useful. If you need encryption, then use the encrypted version of the format.
Usb flash drive mac mac os#
If you are absolutely sure that the flash drive will only be used with Mac computers, and there will never be a need to copy something to and from PC, then the best format is Mac OS Extended Journaled. When it comes to the format, there are many choices, and the choice depends on how the flash drive is going to be used. Type a meaningful description in the Name field (I usually avoid using special symbols, underscores, and spaces). You need to provide three pieces of information: Name, Format, and Size. Since this is a brand new drive, it won’t have partitions like this:Ĭlick on the Partition button in the top toolbar of the app. On the left side of the app, locate the flash drive. This will open the Disk Utility app.Īnother way to open the app is to use the Spotlight Search: press simultaneously Command and Space bar keys and type “Disk Utility” in the search bar. If the drive was never used before (and does not contain any valuable data), then click on the Initialize button. If the USB drive was not formatted, then the first time you plug it into the Mac, you will see the error message “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer” with the options to Initialize, Ignore and Reject. In some cases, the drives were not formatted at all. Most flash drives that you can purchase are preformatted in the Windows format (because there are more PC users than Mac users).
